Indonesian Art in America

World record breaking Angklung in Washington, USA

PITTSBURGH - Indonesian Art again - again enliven the world stage. Lately Americans in Pittsburgh have the opportunity to enjoy the arts Sundanese art troupe presence of Indonesian Arts Institute, Bandung. In addition to presenting the spectacle of art, they also signed a joint agreement between the University of Pittsburgh and the Indonesian Arts Institute.

Indonesia and the United States will cooperate in the form of exchange of students, faculty, research collaboration in the field of Sundanese music and performances. One is holding classes are also taught Sundanese gamelan angklung and calung.

Ridwan Indra, one of the main characters Sundanese arts development in the City of Pittsburgh, said the goal of this partnership is to introduce Indonesian culture other than the culture of Bali or Java to students at the University of Pittsburgh and also to show that Indonesia is very broad.

Through this joint agreement Hopefully the University of Pittsburgh could be Sundanese arts center in America, apalgi with Professor Andrew Weintraub who played a major role makes research in the field of puppet show, poem Sunda and various studies on other Sundanese arts.

Indra who is also a guest lecturer Ethnomusicology University of Pittsburgh, adding that the materials research related to Sundanese arts can be collected at the University of Pittsburgh and then can be stored in the library to be used by many people to research in the field of Sundanese music.

This cooperation also greeted positively by artists who came to Pittsburgh Sunda. Masyuning, a singer, hoping that this cooperation run smoothly. Nature Taryana Similarly, the puppeteer puppet proud Sundanese arts could get out of the country.

But the challenge to introduce America to the Sundanese culture still exist, especially in the areas of cost to send Indonesian students to America.

"We also need to cooperate with the Indonesian government, to address this cost issue," said Indra, who has just completed a doctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh.

However Indra optimistic this is a good first step to progress the development of Sundanese arts in America.